Warm welcome is so important for troops

DURING the Desert Storm operation to liberate Kuwait from the clutches of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1991, the US was engaged in its first large-scale campaign since the Vietnam war ended in 1975.

DURING the Desert Storm operation to liberate Kuwait from the clutches of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1991, the US was engaged in its first large-scale campaign since the Vietnam war ended in 1975.

At the height of the war in Vietnam, the American flag, the Star Spangled Banner, was often only to be seen in the hands of anti-war protesters who would burn it in defiance of the Government’s highly unpopular war.

Similarly, the national anthem, which bears the same name as the flag, was appropriated by rock legend Jimi Hendrix at the 1969 Woodstock festival and turned from a rousing anthem of national pride into a chaotic wall of sound that reflected the chaos many felt the Vietnam war to have taken America into.

Bobbi Roberts, 65, a member of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4380 branch in Plano, Texas, says she noticed at the beginning of the Gulf War that something needed to be done to restore pride in the American flag.

“When Desert Storm began, you could not find an American flag to buy anywhere. I actually set up a company selling them and I couldn’t order them fast enough to meet the demand.

“After Vietnam, people almost seemed to be afraid to show their support for their country, but that’s changed now.

“You see the troops coming back at the airport and they say there’s nowhere else in the country quite like Texas for showing them a warm welcome.”

For Bobbi, friend Debby Bruno and many of the other military wives of Plano who regularly extend a warm welcome to the men and women returning from Iraq, it is imperative the younger generation of combat troops do not suffer what the Vietnam generation had to endure.